"SHINING" WORTH AXING ABOUT

          Celebrating horror's premiere hotel.
          When the director of Dr. Strangelove, 2001: A Space Odyssey, and A Clockwork Orange saw the financial success of The Exorcist, The Omen, and Halloween (having lost a ton on his artful Barry Lyndon), Stanley Kubrick turned Stephen King's best book into a movie masterpiece.
          King famously hates it. But he shouldn't. The 1980 hit is far and away the best of the Stephen King movies. (Misery and the major motion picture It are excellent but don't exceed.) King wrote the teleplay for the 1997 3-part miniseries based on his 1977 novel, and this was supposed to be the superior version to the film by one of cinema's all-time top-tier directors. The result isn't even close. No comparison at all.
          Horror's other hostile hostel, the Bates Motel in Psycho, falls into the Ann Radcliffe school of Gothicism, meaning there is no element of the supernatural, and as such is the lesser of two evil lodgings. For that matter, Alfred Hitchcock's 1960 classic isn't even horror, but rather suspense.
          King's book and Kubrick's film, however, exemplifies the Matthew "Monk" Lewis Gothic brand, which is to say that the ghosts are definitely real.
          The Shining is a haunted house story--maybe the ultimate one--Shirley Jackson's The Haunting of Hill House probably the other best contender. It involves a high school teacher, Jack Torrance, a man with a wife, a son, a drinking problem, and a new job as the winter caretaker of a swanky remote Colorado hotel called the Overlook.
          Which just happens to be built on sacred Indian burial ground.
          The cast of The Shining is brilliant, particularly two actors from the highly respected One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, Jack Nicholson and Scatman Crothers.
          The reason why Stephen King is wrong to complain about Kubrick's film is because, in spite of all King says, the movie simply works so well. There are plenty of other King movies to hate, but not this one.
          That said, interestingly, one can find on YouTube an unexpected side-by-side comparison between the film's most famous scene with Jack taking an ax to a door before uttering the film's most famous line, "Heeeeeere's Johnny!" and a scene from the 1921 film The Phantom Carriage, wherein most of the same thing occurs the same way long prior with too much similarity to be a coincidence.
          Kubrick's geometric style, his eye for filling the frame (he was a Life magazine photographer in his youth), his erudite use of music, the intense performances he extracts from his players, and much more make The Shining an unforgettable experience.
          As Danny Torrance, the little boy with strange telepathic abilities, Danny Lloyd gives one of the all-time great child performances. Can't think of a better. He's totally underrated. (Grew up to become a math teacher, by the way.)
          Shelley Duvall is the perfect Wendy Torrance, just totally believable.
          And starring Jack Nicholson, aka Jacky-Boy, as the ax-wielding caretaker he was born to play.
          Check into the Overlook wherever fine films are available, chop-chop!


THE SHINING
Starring Jack Nicholson,
Shelley Duvall,
Scatman Crothers,
Danny Lloyd,
Joe Turkel
Directed by Stanley Kubrick
Written by Stanley Kubrick, Diane Johnson
Based on the novel by Stephen King
Runtime 146 minutes
Rated R


Stewart Kirby writes for
THE INDEPENDENT
and
TWO RIVERS TRIBUNE